Clarifying Terms
Howdy,
I don't mean to be a pest about this but I am frustrated (and can't follow) the use of terms that get bandied about in the posts and comments. Could we make a concerted effort to trace terms through their usage in the pages of AO so as not to get more confused about what BwO means or any of the other terms? As I am reading the posts I think they are on to something but my thought becomes arrested through the casual encounters with words. It would help me a whole lot.
In another less confused way, maybe we should volunteer to trace the evolution of terms through AO as we encounter them? Terms like BwO and Desiring-Machine take on new meanings not only section to section but from page to page. More on the way!
posted by eriklo @ 9:55 AM
3 Comments:
These are some definitions we came up with for use in first section (as discussed last night). Feel free to add and adjust!
morphogenesis: the beginning of form, as seen in cell differentiation in biology
machine: locus of eroticism, that which produces, "everything is a machine" (p. 3), couples with another machine (that which is desired?)
process: consists of production, consumption, and recording
partial objects: everything is a multiplicity, so every flow is made of partial objects
body without organs: undifferentiated potential; medium on which a process is recorded; is given an identity (in the sense of specific organization at a specific point in time)
When talking about the partial object, could we see that as a moment of fetishization? I am thinking here of the moment in the Pervert's Guide to Cinema in which Dr Strangelove is shown and the partial object is said to be the moment in the film when the dictator is sitting in his chair and his hand gets a mind of its own -- it literally tries to joke him and removes itself from the rest of the body. It is further removed or coded through the black love that differentiates it from the hand that is connected to the body. Hence, the partial object demands desire but only in so much as that desire is partial itself -- ie fetishized after one thing. The body without organs, then, takes that fetishization away (hence the anti-production quality) by removing the locii of traditional desire -- no mouth, no anus, no eyes, etc. Desire, now, is located not in the phenomenological gesture of the senses but in a more political, active way.
Ah, this is good. We were hypothesizing in the meeting about how they were getting out from under Oedipus. This seems like a very good place to continue unraveling from.
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